Candidates and Cancer - Giuliani shows seeds on TV

Candidates and Cancer: No Longer a Taboo Subject on the Campaign Trail
Friday, April 13, 2007 0839 PDT


( P H O T O )

Actor and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson listens as President Bush
makes remarks at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington,
Friday, April 13, 2007.



WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When this year's presidential candidates were children,
the word cancer _ the Big C _ was something of a taboo. As adults, these
candidates are discussing their various cancer battles with almost
matter-of-fact candor, chatting about PSA tests and lymph nodes and the like
as they try to frame their health histories as just another part of their
political profile.

Voters, too, have developed a more nuanced view of what it means to have
cancer. But the 2008 elections may help to measure whether there is any
lingering fear factor attached to presidential contenders who have had the
diagnosis. As actor Fred Thompson, who is considering a run for president,
acknowledged earlier this week when he announced he has a slow-growing type
of lymphoma, "anytime you mention the C-word, it causes concern."

Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster not aligned with any candidate, said
voters have come a long way in their attitudes toward cancer, and seem
willing to discriminate between different types. Prostate cancer, for
example, "is a kitchen-table subject for a lot of people these days," he
said.

"The way voters respond depends very much on the specific illness involved
and the extent to which they tend to think of it as being a risk to the
candidate's long-term health," Garin said.

The candidates themselves seem intent on banishing any concerns by
bombarding voters with information about their particular medical
situations.

Thompson did a multimedia rollout this week to reveal he has non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani brought along some
radioactive seeds as a visual aid when he went on TV to discuss his
treatment for prostate cancer in 2000. Arizona Sen. John McCain, who has
battled melanoma, the most aggressive form of skin cancer, released hundreds
of medical records during the 2004 campaign.

These days, Giuliani and McCain both stress that they have been cancer-free
for years. Thompson says his cancer is an "indolent" version that has given
him no sickness.

In the case of Democratic candidate John Edwards, the former senator and his
wife, Elizabeth, called a news conference to announce that her breast cancer
had returned in incurable form and spread to other parts of the body, but
that it would not slow his presidential campaign.

"The interesting question that remains to be answered is: How are the people
who vote going to look at this?" said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief
medical officer for the American Cancer Society, who keeps a cancer blog on
the Internet. "How all this plays out remains to be seen. I think it shines
the light on a very important fact, which is that we have many more cancer
survivors today."

Lichtenfeld, who is 60, recalls being smacked as a child for daring even to
mention cancer to an aunt who had the disease.

"The candidates are part of that entire change that's ongoing in society,
and it's a healthy change," he said. "People are going to be much more open
to the consideration that this is in fact a chronic disease than they would
have been 10 years ago."

Polling is scant on the politics of cancer, but suggests that people are
willing to set the diagnosis aside if it appears that the trouble is in the
past.

In a February poll for Fox News, two-thirds of those surveyed said a
candidate's past health problems would not be a major factor in determining
their vote. In 2004, 92 percent of those surveyed by Gallup said they were
unconcerned that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry had been
treated for prostate cancer the previous year.

More than a decade earlier, when cancer survivor Paul Tsongas was running
for president in the 1992 campaign, 90 percent of voters said that if
someone had cancer in their past it should not disqualify them from becoming
president. Tsongas, however, serves as a cautionary tale. He was diagnosed
with an aggressive form of lymphoma again shortly after the 1992 election
and died five years later, at age 55.

A number of politicians for other offices have been re-elected as cancer
survivors, including former Sens. Bob Dole and Jesse Helms, who both had
prostate cancer. Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., has had breast cancer, and Rep.
Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., is an ovarian cancer survivor. Rep. Charlie Norwood,
R-Ga., was re-elected last November after a cancerous tumor had been removed
from his lung. But more cancer was found on his liver and he died in
February.

Dole, who ran for president in 1996, managed to wage a vigorous campaign
five years after his surgery. Giuliani, though, abandoned his plans to run
for the Senate in 2000 after being diagnosed with the disease.

As the population ages, and new treatments allow people to live longer with
various types of cancer, the disease is one that people increasingly grapple
with in their daily lives. Ten percent of Americans reported in a 2005
survey that someone in their own household had been diagnosed with cancer.

Many more keep it on their radar screen. Nearly half of all Americans
reported in a 2004 survey that they worry at least occasionally about
getting cancer.

In some ways, a cancer diagnosis can help a politician establish common
ground with voters who may see candidates as "completely crafted by their
political consultants," said Dr. Robert Blendon, a health policy specialist
at the Harvard School of Public Health.

"It makes people identify more with the character of the candidate," said
Blendon.

The downside, from a political standpoint, kicks in if voters fear that a
candidate will become so debilitated that they can't complete their term in
office. And voters attach far greater importance to that question when the
presidency at stake, Garin said.

While this year's candidates won't discuss internal polls, it's a safe bet
that each campaign in sifting through data to determine how voters are
viewing their own candidate's medical conditions _ or those of the
opposition.

Garin, the Democratic pollster, added that while voters have a much better
understanding of cancer than they did a few decades ago, there still are
generational differences in their perceptions.

"Voters who have come of age in the past 10 to 20 years have a much greater
experience of cancer being a curable condition," he said. "Some much older
voters still have a sort of instinctual feeling of cancer as a death
sentence."

"At the end of the day," he added, "people need to be comfortable in their
own minds that the candidate is healthy enough to serve in office for four
years."